The fight over oil is now a fight about Confederation

Redford said such an arrangement would be a first in Canada. She said many pipelines that cross Alberta carry resources from B.C., and mused about whether B.C. would be willing to give Alberta a cut of the royalties it earns from those resources. She said Clark is essentially suggesting “that somehow the fundamental fiscal arrangements of Confederation need to change.” “When you start doing that, it means every commercial project in Canada will now become or would become a matter for interprovincial negotiation,” Redford said.

“I don’t think that’s a contemplated option,” said Cal Dallas heading into a late afternoon cabinet meeting. “Clearly we need to move all kinds of product around the country through a variety of different infrastructure types and that hasn’t been the way we’ve done business in the past and I don’t believe there’ll be early contemplation of an option of such as you’re describing.”

“We don’t have any history of sharing in uranium in Saskatchewan or the vast mining resources that exist in Ontario and Quebec and certainly with respect to forestry products and the like that move from west to east from British Columbia so the answer is we have a system in place, it’s worked well.”

As soon as someone else wants a say, that means we have to reopen the whole shebang Confederation. Isn’t that what Alberta is asking for when it elects Senators? Complains about have not provinces riding on their coat tails? Electoral distribution? Seems that when Alberta politicians say “the west wants in” they just mean Alberta.

One man’s “inhibiting trade/access to foreign markets” is another man’s provincial responsibility to protect crown lands. If the federal government wasn’t fixing the licencing process, maybe B.C. could have some confidence that its interests were being protected and let that process unfold. As it stands, it seems to be a surpise to Ms. Redford that other provinces aren’t as comfortable as she is letting oil companies decide their affairs.

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